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To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

A woman assaulted when she was 4 1/2 months pregnant wanted so badly to sit in judgment of Modesto's Scott Peterson a little more than 3 years later that she lied before being picked as a juror, then helped send him to death row in 2004, Peterson's latest appeal says.

The 285-page document, filed Nov. 24, also heaps blame on Peterson's celebrity defense attorney, Mark Geragos, for lapses in the sensational trial, including failing to fulfill promises to jurors that he would prove Peterson "stone cold innocent" or to call witnesses who might have debunked prosecution evidence, the appeal says.

"In view of (Geragos') broken promises, the jury - not without reason - concluded that Scott was 'stone cold guilty,'" says the document, written by Berkeley appeals attorney Lawrence Gibbs.

Substitute teacher Laci Peterson, 27, was 8 months pregnant when she disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002. Her husband, then 30 and now 43, said he had been fishing in a newly purchased boat in San Francisco Bay and returned to an empty house, and the badly decomposed bodies of mother and fetus washed ashore nearly 4 months later.

The revelation of juror Richelle Nice's deception, combined with recent testimony from prospective witnesses ignored by Geragos, constitute new evidence warranting reversal of Peterson's conviction and death sentence, Gibbs says in the habeas corpus appeal aimed at winning Peterson's release.

"It turns out that (Richelle Nice), herself, had been a victim of a crime that endangered the life of her unborn child - a crime similar to that for which Scott stood accused. Ms. Nice suppressed this information, however, in an apparent attempt to gain a spot on Mr. Peterson's jury."----Lawrence Gibbs, appellate attorney

A 2nd legal team based in Oakland previously presented separate pending appeals claiming missteps by Judge Al Delucchi, who died of cancer in 2008. California Supreme Court justices could elect to weigh the appeals separately or together.

Media, afforded a rare visit on Tuesday to California's death row at San Quentin Prison, reported seeing Peterson playing basketball with other inmates in a section housing those with the fewest behavioral problems. He turned his back to photographers and declined to speak, reporters said.

Gibbs' appeal details 19 reasons for overturning the conviction that captivated people across the United States and beyond. Some points cover ground similar to the previous appeals, casting doubt that a certified dog with a poor track record could have picked up Laci Peterson's scent at the Berkeley Marina four days after authorities believe her husband launched his 14-foot boat to dump her body, and on expert testimony about water currents carrying bodies.

"In each of these forensic areas (gestational age, scent-tracking dogs, water currents), police told their experts the result they hoped the experts would arrive at, thus introducing a form of 'expectation bias.'"----Lawrence Gibbs, appellate attorney

But Gibbs delves into other areas, often blaming authorities for overstepping, and concluding that Geragos was sloppy.

"It turns out that the jury deciding this case did not have the whole truth - or anything close," Gibbs said in the appeal.

Geragos, of Los Angeles, initially provided television legal commentary on the Peterson matter before taking over the defense team as the case ballooned to blockbuster status. He came on strong early in the trial but jurors ultimately did not buy his theory that unidentified vagrants must have kidnapped Laci Peterson and disposed of her body in the bay to frame her husband.

Nice, nicknamed "Strawberry Shortcake" by observers during the trial for her flamboyant hair dye, was asked in a pretrial questionnaire for prospective jurors whether she had ever been in a lawsuit or trial and whether she, family or friends had been crime victims. She checked "no" boxes - all false answers, the appeal reveals.

In 2000, when Nice was pregnant, her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend stalked and threatened them and spent a week in jail, and Nice said nothing about it when she was considered for Peterson's jury.

In fact, Delucchi, knowing the trial would stretch several months, started to excuse Nice because her job would stop paying her after 2 weeks, but she asked to stay on anyway and later bummed $1,000 from a fellow juror, Gibbs said.

"Ms. Nice wanted to sit in judgment of Mr. Peterson in part to punish him for a crime of harming his unborn child - a crime that she personally experienced when (the assailant) threatened her life and the life of her unborn child," the appeal reads.

Gibbs quoted from 6 letters sent by Nice after the trial to Peterson on death row, all fixating on his dead boy, including one in which she visualized what he might have looked like.

"My heart aches for your son. Why couldn't he have the same chances (in) life as you were given? You should have been dreaming of your son being the best at whatever he did in life, not planning a way to get rid of him!"----Richelle Nice, in a post-trial letter to Scott Peterson

"Damit (sic) Scott that was your son! Your first born. If you never wanted children you should have married someone with the same wants as you," reads one.

Gibbs later obtained a statement from Geragos, who said he would have kept Nice off the panel had he known her history. "There is no way in the world I would have wanted a juror to sit in judgment of Mr. Peterson, when that juror had been a victim of the very crime for which Mr. Peterson was on trial," Geragos reportedly said.

Geragos told jurors early in the trial that he would call to the stand people who had seen Laci Peterson walking the family dog after the time authorities said she was killed, but he never produced those witnesses. Geragos later admitted, in Gibbs' investigation, that he had not read a "critical police report" and said he would have called the eyewitnesses had he realized that the document undermined the prosecution timeline.

"Mr. Geragos' deficient representation - in which he gave an opening statement in which he promised the jury it would hear these witnesses, but then failed to call a single one of them - was prejudicial."

----Lawrence Gibbs, appellate attorney

Also, a man convicted of burglarizing a house across the street from the Petersons' Covena Avenue home later told people that he verbally threatened Laci Peterson when she confronted him, Gibbs said. The burglary occurred shortly after her husband left to go fishing; if the burglar's story is true, Scott Peterson must be innocent, Gibbs said.

The appeal castigates Geragos for calling a fertility doctor, whose testimony ended in a train wreck, to estimate the gestational age of Conner Peterson. The prosecution's counter-expert, using a special computation, calculated that Conner died by Dec. 23, 2002 - fitting authorities' theory. But Gibbs tracked down the doctor who invented the computation, and he told Gibbs that the prosecution's witness botched the calculation.

In fact, Conner probably died Jan. 3, 2003, and might have lived as late as Jan. 5, the doctor told Gibbs, who wrote, "The jury never knew any of this."

"The state's case was riddled with false evidence," Gibbs said. "(Geragos) failed to expose the falsity of this evidence, he failed to deliver on promises made to jurors in opening statements, and he failed to support the theory of defense he himself had selected."

Gibbs' appeal also claims that the death penalty amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

California has 745 condemned inmates but has not executed any since 2006. A federal judge declared executions unconstitutional last year, but appellate justices overturned that ruling and competing initiatives could appear on the ballot next fall, one asking to abolish the death penalty and the other hoping to fast-track it.

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Organizers of an anti-death penalty coalition say they have delivered over 56,000 petition signatures to New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, urging him to sign a bill to repeal the state’s capital punishment law.
Sununu has vowed to veto the bill, saying he stands with crime victims and members of the law enforcement community.
Before presenting the signatures, the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty held a news conference Thursday where family members of murder victims spoke in favor of repealing the death penalty.
The bill was passed by the House and Senate.
It is unclear whether they have a two-thirds majority of votes in both chambers, which is needed to override vetoes. Source: The Associated Press, May 17, 2018

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The high school junior accused of gunning down 10 students and teachers at a Santa Fe school is facing a capital murder charge - but he’ll never face the death penalty, even in Texas.
Though Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged as an adult and jailed without bond, even if he’s found guilty he can’t be sentenced to death because of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And in the Lone Star State, he can’t be sentenced to life without parole as the result of a 2013 law that banned the practice for minors.
“In Texas, after the Supreme Court’s decision, they passed a law that basically says that it’s a life sentence if you’re under 18 at the time of the crime,” said attorney Amanda Marzullo, executive director of Texas Defender Services. “The Court has said that it is cruel and unusual to execute an individual who is under 18 at the time of the offense.”
The Santa Fe High School student admitted to the mass shooting that killed 10 and wounded 10 others early Friday, according to court documents.…

31 years ago, on May 20, 1987, just before midnight, I was sitting in the witness area of the Mississippi Gas Chamber watching someone die in front of me. His name was Edward Earl Johnson.
I am both sad and glad that Edward’s final two weeks, right up to his agonising death, were recorded in Paul Hamann’s extraordinary BBC documentary Fourteen Days in May. Sad, because from time to time I find myself forced to relive that horror, when I watch the film at some public event; glad, because at least Edward’s senseless death has had positive repercussions – the film inspiring many to take up the battle for people in his precarious predicament.
Yet it irks me beyond measure that people who should know better use their position of power to prognosticate that the justice system never executes the innocent. For example, in a case called Kansas v. March, in 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia loudly proclaimed that there is not “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a…

How much does the public have a right to know about how the state of Indiana executes people?
It is a question that, effectively, strikes at the heart of capital punishment. And it's the issue in a 4-year-old case in Marion Circuit Court that started with a public records request by Washington attorney A. Katherine Toomey to the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC).
"If we win ... the Indiana public will know more about one of the most consequential areas of decision making that the state of Indiana engages in," attorney Peter Racher said in an interview.
The state, however, sees it as contrary to a state law limiting what the public can see pertaining to executions. The law was controversial because of how it passed. After midnight on the final day of the 2017 legislative session, it was added to a budget bill, two pages out of 175.
"The budget is now a death penalty bill," Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, said at the time. "There's been no public…

(CNN) - An Australian woman has been sentenced to death by hanging after a Malaysian court overturned an earlier acquittal of drug smuggling charges.
According to CNN affiliate Sky News, a three-judge panel unanimously threw out the previous ruling in 54-year-old Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto's case.
The grandmother and mother of four was arrested in December 2014 while transiting through the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on a flight from Shanghai to Melbourne, according to another CNN affiliate, SBS News.
She was found in possession of 1.1 kilos (2.4 lb) of crystal methamphetamine and faced a mandatory death penalty under Malaysia's draconian drugs laws.
Exposto claimed she had no knowledge of the drugs in her bag and had been scammed by a boyfriend she met online.
According to SBS, Exposto's lawyers said she had gone to Shanghai to file documents in relation to her boyfriend's retirement from service in the US army. When she left China, Exposto claimed she was handed …

The lawyers fighting the death penalty ordered for a former Northmont High School student want the Ohio Supreme Court to reconsider its affirmation of the sentence and scheduling of the execution.
Austin Myers' lawyers said in a motion filed this morning that they want the state's highest court to overturn the conviction and call a new trial "or in the alternative that his sentence be modified to life without parole."
Myers, 23, is still apparently the 2nd youngest on Ohio's death row 3 1/2 years after being sentenced for the murder of childhood friend Justin Back, 18, of Wayne Twp., Warren County.
Last Thursday, the court affirmed the death penalty for Myers, for the stabbing death of Back at his home outside Waynesville in January 2014.
The execution was scheduled for July 20, 2022 in the decision.
Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell was pleased with the 7-0 ruling by the state's highest court.
"The 7-0 decision is always something you like to se…

Defendant claims firefighters didn't try hard enough to extinguish blaze
The nanny responsible for killing 4 members of a family in an arson appeared in court in eastern China on Thursday to appeal her death sentence.
Mo Huanjing, nanny of the family of Lin Shengbin, pleaded guilty to starting the fire. But she said during the appeal at Zhejiang High People's Court that "the penalty in the original ruling was extremely heavy".
"The tragedy wasn't the result I wanted to see," she added. She said the efforts of firefighters were flawed. And she confessed to her offense during the initial interrogation, which could be regarded as a reason to earn a more lenient sentence.
Wu Pengbin, her lawyer, told China Daily that some firefighters and employees of the property management department of Lin's apartment attended the hearing as witnesses at his urging.
"I wanted them to show what they were doing at the time to the court, as I, with my client, thoug…

To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

Concerns about Texas' dwindling lethal injection supplies coupled with questions about the age of the drugs have some advocates wondering whether the state is prepared to humanely carry out its recent uptick in scheduled executions.
Texas currently has 8 death dates and 9 doses of its execution drug - compounded sodium pentobarbital - for use in the Huntsville death chamber. What's more, a string of contradictory records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice raises questions about whether some of those doses could be 3 years old, far older than previously reported and old enough that experts worry it could increase the chances of a "torturous" execution.
"The older the drug the greater the likelihood of a botched execution. Period," said Maurie Levin, a death penalty lawyer with experience in lethal injection litigation. "It becomes contaminated, corrupted, impotent, and all of those things can lead to a torturous execution."
In response …

Texas executed Juan Castillo, who said he was innocent, for 2003 San Antonio murder
A Texas death row inmate was executed Wednesday — his 4th execution date in a year. Though advocates and his attorneys insisted on Juan Castillo's innocence, he lost all his fights in court and was put to death for a 2003 San Antonio murder.
Juan Castillo was put to death Wednesday evening, ending his death sentence on his 4th execution date within the year.
The 37-year-old was executed for the 2003 robbery and murder of Tommy Garcia Jr. in San Antonio.
The execution had been postponed three times since last May, including a rescheduling because of Hurricane Harvey.
Castillo's advocates and attorneys had insisted on his innocence in Garcia’s murder, pleading unsuccessfully for a last-minute 30-day stay of execution from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott after all of his appeals were rejected in the courts.
The Texas Defender Service, a capital defense group who had recently picked up Castillo’s cas…

DPN opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner. The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. Death Penalty News is a privately owned, non-profit organization. It is based in Paris, France.Your donations to Death Penalty News DO make a difference.